


Becalmed

by second_hand_heaven



Category: Black Sails
Genre: 1 (one) hug, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hand Feeding, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Personally leaning toward pre-slash but that's just me, because Flint needs one, he needs many but one is the best I can do rn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25048579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/second_hand_heaven/pseuds/second_hand_heaven
Summary: "Silver squints in the darkness, a sharp contrast to the blaring sunlight from out on deck. For a moment, as his eyes adjust to the dark, Silver can’t see Flint. He’s not at his desk, not at his bed. No, the captain is sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to his chest, back to the hull, tucked into that small space beside the bookshelf. He looks impossibly small, like a child hiding from his father’s belt of his mother’s sharp tongue. Even in the darkness of the cabin, Silver can make out the tear tracks lining his reddened cheek. Silver’s not sure he’s ever seen the captain like this, not even after Charlestown."Set during XXI (S3E3) while the crew is adrift in the doldrums. Flint once again becomes the villain, shooting two of his crewmen. Silver deals with the aftermath.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw & John Silver, Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	Becalmed

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Black Sails fic, I'm incredibly late to the party but I hope that's okay. Flint constantly painting himself as the bad guy, especially so no one else has to, absolutely kills me so I just had to write something about this episode. Aside from Flint locking his fucking cabin door, this fic can be read as canon-compliant, which tbh is a first for me. Like it says in the tags, this can be gen or pre-slash, but I'm a little biased toward the pre-slash. If you think it would be best that I tag this with the ship tag as well as (or instead of) the friendship tag, please let me know. 
> 
> ANyways, on with the fic!

On top of all the shit Silver is dealing with, he doesn’t expect two men to betray their -his- crew like this. On any other day, it would be worth a short chastisement, nothing more. On any other day, Silver wouldn’t have really cared. But stealing food from your fellow men while the ship is caught in the purgatory of the doldrums? That deserves real punishment. Silver just has to figure out which of the two men did it. 

Flint beats him to it. He steps forward, gun drawn, and shoots the first man kneeling on the deck. 

Fuck. 

Flint fires the gun, and Silver knows he’s going to fire it again. The insight he has acquired into the captain’s mind is unsettling. 

The poor bugger kneeling before Flint doesn’t know, though, thanking and begging the captain while Flint reloads his pistol. The man’s thanks and praise soon turn to whimpers once more as Flint takes his aim. The men gathered around them wince, awaiting the crack of a gunshot and the splatter of blood and brains. 

Then Flint hesitates for a second, and Silver isn’t sure what to think. He shouldn’t be thinking at all, should be charging at Flint, knocking the gun from his hand, or at least stepping forward, trying to diffuse this situation. Instead, he just stands there and watches as Flint pulls himself together and fires the gun once more. 

Fuck, it’s a mess. 

What’s worse, though, is that it’s his mess. Or it should be. It’s not his blood seeping into the deck, but it’s blood on his hands all the same. Silver is the quartermaster; he’s supposed to be the one dishing out punishment and dealing with the crew. They’re his responsibility. 

“Does everyone understand?” Flint says, “does anyone have anything to say?”

Silver has a million things he wants to say but he can’t find the words.

In the silence, Flint turns to leave. He walks toward Silver and leans in close, his body hot and menacing. “If you are not strong enough to do what needs to be done, then I will do it for you.”

Flint leans back and stalks off to his cabin. Silver lets out a shaky breath. Fuck. He glances up, and all the eyes of the crew, bar those belonging to the two bodies slumped on the deck, are on him. Usually he relishes gaining their undivided attention, but right now it makes him want to squirm. They’re looking to him for answers, and right now he doesn’t have any. Not any that he can share with the crew. Because he knows what Flint did and why he did it. Thieves and discontent cannot be allowed to exist unchecked, least of all now. It is as bad for morale as it is for everyone else’s hunger, and of course, there are two mouths less to feed, to water, as well. So no, Silver knows why Flint made the call, understands it to some degree, but he can’t articulate that to the crew, not now. He can’t tell them that their captain thinks they are all dispensable, worthless beyond their ability to sail his ship to his own ends. 

That doesn’t bode well for morale. 

Silver knows why Flint did what he did, but then again, does he? Why did Flint overstep? In front of the entire crew, no less. To consolidate his dictatorship and discredit Silver’s authority in the process? Flint’s words ring in his ears: they sound like a gunshot. Like two. 

The men are still looking at him. 

“Clean this up,” he says, voice firm. He doesn’t say how, or what to do with them, whether the usual rights apply to thieves who betray their own brothers or not. He’ll leave that up to Billy; the boatswain always seems to know these things better than he. He’s not resentful about that, though. He knows Billy knows the crew, has served with them far longer than Silver has. Silver might have been voted in as their quartermaster, but it’s Billy who knows their minds. Sharing that responsibility, that power over the men, Silver is amenable to. What he isn’t amenable to is Flint’s actions. 

The anger simmers in his chest. How dare Flint take Silver’s responsibility from him. How dare he shoot two crewmen without proper trial or consideration. How dare he undermine Silver in front of his men. How dare he not trust him-

Well, that’s laughable. Whatever this alliance between the two of them is, trust is not a part of it. That was made abundantly clear. They need each other, sure, but they don’t trust each other. Which was also made abundantly clear on deck just now. 

Well, fuck him. He storms into the captain’s quarters without a second thought. 

Silver squints in the darkness, a sharp contrast to the blaring sunlight from out on deck. For a moment, as his eyes adjust to the dark, Silver can’t see Flint. He’s not at his desk, not at his bed. No, the captain is sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to his chest, back to the hull, tucked into that small space beside the bookshelf. He looks impossibly small, like a child hiding from his father’s belt of his mother’s sharp tongue. Even in the darkness of the cabin, Silver can make out the tear tracks lining his reddened cheek. Silver’s not sure he’s ever seen the captain like this, not even after Charlestown. 

Either Flint doesn’t hear him enter, or he doesn’t care enough to hide this overwhelming display of weakness from Silver. The anger roiling in Silver’s gut turns to unease. 

“Captain?” Silver asks warily. He takes a step closer, and then another. Flint doesn’t react. “Flint?”

Flint’s breaths come short and sharp, almost hiccups, and as fast as Flint is breathing, he’s not getting enough air. 

Fuck. 

Silver kneels as best as he can in front of Flint. “Flint?”

Flint’s head jerks up, eyes wild with anger and… fear? What the fuck? Flint grabs at Silver’s shirt, twisting the fabric in a white-knuckle grip. Silver has seen men in this kind of panic before, when the captain calls for the men to go over the rails, or in the aftermath of a fight. He’s seen others handle it, too, with steady hands and steady words, or alternatively with a blunt object directed at the man’s head. 

“I can’t,” he rasps, breathless, “I can’t-”

Silver cuts him off. “It’s alright,” he says, though really it’s not, it’s the furthest from alright that it could be, in all honesty, except for the fact that neither one of them is bleeding, that he knows of. They’re stuck in the middle of the ocean, about to starve to death, and their captain is clearly half-mad, working his way toward becoming a full-blown lunatic. “It’s alright.”

He takes Flint’s hand, the one bunched in his shirt, in both of his own, and gently pries open Flint’s fist one finger at a time. The muscles are taut but Flint doesn’t fight it, too busy with his own battle for breath. Good. At least that means Flint’s less likely to strangle Silver once he lets go. 

His shirt released, Silver takes Flint’s hand by the wrist and places Flint’s palm against the centre of Silver’s chest. “Listen to my breathing,” Silver says, “feel my breathing.” Flint’s fingertips twitch. “Breathe with me. Nice and slow, nice and calm.” 

“Silver,” Flint warns, but he doesn’t pull away.

Silver exaggerates his inhale, focusing on keeping his own breathing deep and slow. Flint’s palm is warm against his chest and Silver tries to ignore how nice, how foreign, the contact feels. 

It takes a while, but eventually Flint’s breathing slows and begins to even out. 

“Good,” Silver encourages in a low voice before he even realises the word is out of his mouth. 

Flint lets out a deep breath that almost sounds like a sigh. He leans back against the wall and stares up at the ceiling, his hand slipping from Silver’s chest. Silver lets it go. 

His knees ache, but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t dare. Although, he’s not too sure what he does dare to do. Would it be best for him to leave now and never mention whatever the hell this was? Probably. But leaving the cabin means facing the men, and he's not sure he can take that right now. Leaving Flint alone in this state seems like a poor course of action too. So he stays, kneeling on aching legs, watching the man sitting before him acting like a stranger. 

Flint is the one to break the silence. "What are you doing here, Silver?" His voice is roughened by his earlier panic, tired by it too. 

A flicker of anger reminds Silver of his reasoning for entering the captain’s cabin unannounced, an anger he’d swiftly forgotten. His usual brand of humour and distraction comes to him easily. "Now that sounds awfully unlike a thank you, if I'm being honest. Would you like to try again?"

Flint grunts, the muscles in his jaw bunching together. 

Alright, a different tactic. “What would you like me to say, that I came in here to make sure you were alright? No grievous injuries from shooting two of my men in cold blood?” Silver rakes a hand across his face and sighs. "I came in here to accuse you of undermining my authority with the men."

Flint turns to face him. "That's what you thought? That I did this to hurt you?"

_ You didn't hurt me _ sounds too defensive, so Silver bites his tongue. "I'm their quartermaster,” he says instead, “I'm supposed to deal with them. I was going to deal with them." 

"Would you have killed them? Would you have looked them in the eye, seeing the faces of those you loved instead, and killed them anyway?"

No, no he wouldn't have. He wouldn't have shot them, first and foremost, and if he were to, well, he wouldn't have seen the faces of loved ones. That's one benefit of not having any, after all. 

"I would have dealt with them," Silver repeats. 

"Have you whipped a man before? Heard him scream for mercy each and every time the tails strike his flesh, and had to continue on despite it because you're only halfway through the lashing you promised? It's far from the caning you'd get yourself in school, boy, I'd hate to tell you." Flint sneers, and Silver is almost relieved to see it. This is the Flint he knows, the Flint he understands. Snarling, sharp, attacking. Their arguing, their back-and-forth of sharp verbal jabs and parries, is familiar territory and Silver knows where he stands. 

"The men believe me to be a capable quartermaster and that is the fact here. If they thought I couldn’t deal out punishment as was fit, they would not have given me such a role. Now they think of me as weak-willed in the face of the captain I'm supposed to protect them from." 

Flint shakes his head. "Now they think of you as the voice of reason against their madman captain. Now they think themselves lucky to have two less men to feed, and they won't feel guilty about that thought at all because it was their captain, not them, not their quartermaster, who made it so. Now they fear me and respect you, not the other way around." 

Silver stares at the man. The even footing he thought he’d found crumbles beneath him. 

"I told you as much," Flint continues, though his voice is softer now, "if you need me to make the hard calls, the hard decisions, then I will. I will do this for you, every time, as long as I am needed to." 

It’s the same as what Flint told him on deck, but it sounds so different now in the privacy of Flint’s cabin. In the dark, in the intimacy of the shadows, it doesn’t sound like a threat. It sounds like Muldoon promising to look after him, like his crew staying with him, holding him down as Howell took his leg. 

It sounds all too much like something Silver doesn’t want to name, doesn’t want to hear, and he can't bear to look at the piercing emotion in Flint's eyes. He looks anywhere other than Flint: to the aft window, to the bookshelf, to the decking beneath his knees, before his eyes fall on Flint's desk. There's a plate of food sitting there, untouched. 

One of the only men on full rations, and yet Flint is starving himself. "You need to eat something."

"So do you," Flint shoots back, and Silver hates the way this man knows him so well, can read him well enough to know that Silver wouldn't touch a morsel as long as members of his crew starved as well. He doesn't know when he became this man, but he's certain Flint might have more of an idea about it than he does himself. 

Leaning against the hull, Silver stands and makes his way to the desk. Maps and loose sheets of paper stretch optimistically across most of the surface. The gun that shot the two crewmen, that has shot and killed countless others, sits innocuously to the side. Silver squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and turns his attention away. 

There’s a mug sitting beside the plate, though on closer inspection Silver finds it empty. Some water might do the captain some good, especially after that panic, but not much can be done about it now. It wouldn’t be a good look for the captain, one of two men on full rations, taking more than his share. 

He goes to pick up the plate and considers his actions for a second. Making Flint eat and look after himself is not his responsibility, surely, but Flint is the captain, and despite everything, he and the crew know that they need him, at least for now. Even Billy, knotted up inside with hatred and grief, couldn’t argue with that. Silver’s responsibility lies with the crew, which means he has a responsibility to make sure Flint doesn’t get himself or any more of the crew killed. Or, at least, that’s how he rationalises the sudden urge to look after him. 

He picks up the plate and glances back at Flint, who is still sitting where he left him, watching Silver with a guarded curiosity. Silver crosses the room, trying not to jostle plate as he does. He slowly drops to his knees before Flint once more, plate in hand. He shoves it toward Flint. "Eat." 

Flint shakes his head and faces the bookshelf. 

"Don't be a child, Flint. Eat." 

When Flint doesn't move, Silver decides to instead. He takes breaks off a bite-sized piece of hard cheese and holds it up to Flint's lips. Flint levels him a deathly stare, but Silver doesn’t shrink away. 

After an eternity, Flint rolls his eyes and parts his lips, allowing Silver to place the morsel of food on Flint’s tongue. The softness of Flint’s mouth contrasts with the coarse hair of Flint’s moustache, and Silver bites his own tongue to keep silent. 

Flint watches him, watches each and every movement, but Silver refuses to shrink, refuses to give anything away. He’s used to being studied by Flint, perhaps not this close, but either way he shrugs off the attention and focuses on the task at hand. Slowly, they repeat the motion, and soon enough Flint has eaten half of the food left on the plate. 

“Enough,” Flint says. He turns his head away and refuses to eat any more. 

It’s better than Silver had expected, in all honesty. He sets the plate to the side.

Flint is studying him. “Why are you doing this?”

_ Why? _ Silver barely stops himself from scoffing at Flint’s question. “Does it matter?” What’s done is done, and Silver doesn’t want to be questioned on something he doesn’t know the answer to. Flint isn’t dead and shouldn’t kill himself, accidentally or otherwise, in the near future, and that is what Flint should be thinking about now, not Silver’s intentions for doing anything. It must have been easier, though, back at the start of their acquaintance, when Flint could trust that Silver’s actions were always in his own interest. Now, Silver isn’t so sure about it, and it seems Flint isn’t either. Well, Silver doesn’t care to consider it. He makes his way to his feet, intent on leaving the cabin, his captain, and whatever the fuck is going on in here behind. 

The ship rocks, or doesn’t rock when it should, and Silver’s balance wavers. His iron foot slips against the decking, and he is only halted in his fall by a strong arm reaching out for his waist, steadying him. Gratitude is just another sign of weakness, so Silver keeps his thanks to himself. 

Flint’s eyes find his and they are burning with the same emotion as before, but Silver can’t look away, not this time. Flint's instincts were -are- to help, no matter the personal cost, no matter the toll to himself. 

“Are you really a monster, Flint?”

Flint’s brow furrows. He looks so very close to saying ‘yes’ that Silver can’t help but keep talking, if only to keep Flint from doing so. 

“You’ve painted yourself the monster countless times over,” Silver says, “but to do so for the benefit of another? That doesn’t sound so monstrous to me.” 

Flint lets out a soft sound, like a whine of pain, and rests his forehead against Silver’s hip, his face hidden from view. One hand still clutches at Silver’s waist, the other slipping around Silver’s left thigh. 

Silver runs a hand across Flint’s shorn head, down his neck, and stops at Flint’s shoulder. He doesn’t push the other man away, although he probably should. It’s dangerous, this kind of intimacy. It’s so close to trust, a trust neither of them can afford to have. He doesn’t push Flint away, though; he’s beginning to forget how. 

With his free hand, Silver strokes Flint’s head, like one would pet a pup or a small child, and Flint’s shoulders shake. He doesn’t cry, or if he does, Silver cannot hear it. So Silver holds onto Flint as his body shakes, and Flint holds Silver to keep him steady. Against the slow rocking of the ship, Flint is his anchor, his support. Just as he is Flint’s. It is madness, pure and simple, but its allure, Flint’s allure, is stronger than a riptide. 

If the men were to rush in here and take in the sight, they’d assume the worst, assume Silver too was losing his mind for having his cock in the mouth of a madman. And while that thought has a thin tendril of arousal curling in Silver’s gut, reality is far from perception, though. This is something far more intimate than that. What it is, well, Silver can’t quite name. Refuses to try. 

“Go,” Flint says eventually. Silver is clueless to how much time has passed. “The men will be asking after you.” He makes no move to release Silver though. He makes no move at all. 

Flint’s words and actions are in opposition, Silver notes, speaking to the conflict in his mind. Silver feels it too. He knows Flint’s words to be true enough, but the second he moves, he knows, their moment of peace will be shattered. His hand falls from Flint’s hair and rests at his side. “Is that an order, Captain?”

Flint tilts his head back and looks up at Silver, unflinching. “Yes.” He unwinds his left arm from around Silver’s thigh, but his grip on Silver’s waist remains firm, steadying. 

“Right then,” Silver says, and takes a moment before extracting himself from Flint’s hold. He gives Flint’s shoulder one last squeeze before he steps back, turning away from his captain, just like Flint asked. 

He exits the cabin bathed in darkness and squints at the onslaught of sunlight pouring in from above. His eyes adjust to the light and find the two bloodstains on the decking, scrubbed clean but lingering, if only in Silver’s mind. 

Silver makes his way across the deck, the men’s eyes following each step. He won’t give them anything, tell them anything other than what they need to hear, and right now that is nothing. So he lets them imagine what Flint and he spoke about, how Silver dealt with Flint, or vice versa, and won’t correct them. The men don’t need to know that Flint isn’t the monster he paints himself to be. The men don’t need to know that both Silver and Flint think they’ll all die out here, themselves included. What they need to know is that Silver is here, that his mind is here, sane, and that he is looking out for them. They don’t need to know that Flint is looking out for him. 

_ FIN _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Comments and kudos always welcome. Hit me up at my tumblr second-hand-heaven if you want to chat about Black Sails, FlintSilver, or anything in particular. 
> 
> -Nova xx


End file.
